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(09-22-2020 03:25 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 10:23 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-20-2020 03:35 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  

(09-20-2020 11:45 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  Regarding Miami, I just have a hard time defining their strengths. They're not a liberal arts college. They're not a flagship research university. Their alumni base isn't all that. Despite how they like to portray themselves, they seem to be good at churning out a lot of corporate middle-managers. Their endowment is actually slightly smaller than OU's, and their last multi-year campaign was a failure. So, what are they? What are they other than a more selective version of Bowling Green that's found a way to market itself in the Chicago suburbs to preppy conservative kids who don't get into UofI? How do you build on that? Where do you go with it? I think the academic and reputational stagnation and decline they're experiencing is inevitable. Hell, it was literally written in stone the moment that the state of Ohio decided to let Ohio State compete with them on an equal footing as selective undergraduate colleges.

Regarding Cincinnati, I don't think it's necessarily aping Ohio State as much as it's doing the things necessary to achieve what I think are the long term strategic goals that everyone in these discussions agrees on and thinks are attainable: making UC the undisputed second comprehensive research university in Ohio and getting into the AAU. We can't do either unless we both continue to build upon our strengths while making a firm commitment to address our fundamental weakness in A&S. I understand that using OSU as the aspirational model for this is going to rub some people the wrong way. So let's take those emotions out of the debate and just say we need to look at Minnesota or Wisconsin or Texas and do the things necessary to move in their direction. In fact, Pitt would be a perfect model in this regard.

Ideally:

OSU = UVa
UC = VT
Miami = William & Mary

OSU is very close to UVa. How close is UC to VT? Miami has been slipping, it is not as close to W & M today as it was 20 years ago.

I've always liked the Virginia system as a corrollary for what Ohio could be should we continue the way we are currently organized...two public academic engines (UVA and VT), one huge endowment with an extremely solid research drive in an urban environment (VCU), one highly reputable public LA/UG Research institution (W&M), and then large mostly UG focused research institutions in the major population areas (JMU, ODU, and GMU). To me, the comparison can push even further than what you've said.

OSU = UVA
UC = VCU (VERY similar institutions at this point...we're far off from VT, and likely will never get there based on the representative disparity in the State House.)
Miami = William and Mary
Kent State/Akron = George Mason
OU = JMU
BGSU/Toledo = ODU

The comparison is tempting. Especially with William & Mary and Miami being the only real comparables for each other in the country. And especially for UC fans who want UC to be regarded like Virginia Tech.

However, our system is fundamentally different because of the huge difference in the size of the flagship: Ohio State has 61,000 students. UVA has 25,000.

Ohio is about 30% bigger than Virginia, so you would expect UVA to about the size of UC if the systems were comparable.

What is the Ohio equivalent of small liberal arts public colleges like Longwood, University of Mary Washington, and Christopher Newport? They don't exist.



Also, the systems are fundamentally affected by the private schools in the state. Xavier = Richmond. Christendom = Stuebenville. But other than that?

What is the Virginia equivalent of Case Western? It doesn't exist.

What is the Virginia equivalent of Dayton? It doesn't exist.

What is the Ohio equivalent of Liberty? A large, mediocre private school with no research focus? It doesn't exist.

It seems like every little Ohio town has a university. Ohio has three times as many private schools with over 2,000 students as Virginia does, and none of the Virginia ones are highly ranked. What is the Virginia equivalent of Oberlin, Kenyon, Baldwin-Wallace, Dennison, John Carroll, etc? There's Washington & Lee, but it's tiny.

The number of colleges and universities in this state is ridiculous. Tiffin, Ohio has two colleges in their city and 24 others within a 50 mile radius.

Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

(09-22-2020 04:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:25 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 10:23 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-20-2020 03:35 PM)Former Lurker Wrote:  Ideally:

OSU = UVa
UC = VT
Miami = William & Mary

OSU is very close to UVa. How close is UC to VT? Miami has been slipping, it is not as close to W & M today as it was 20 years ago.

I've always liked the Virginia system as a corrollary for what Ohio could be should we continue the way we are currently organized...two public academic engines (UVA and VT), one huge endowment with an extremely solid research drive in an urban environment (VCU), one highly reputable public LA/UG Research institution (W&M), and then large mostly UG focused research institutions in the major population areas (JMU, ODU, and GMU). To me, the comparison can push even further than what you've said.

OSU = UVA
UC = VCU (VERY similar institutions at this point...we're far off from VT, and likely will never get there based on the representative disparity in the State House.)
Miami = William and Mary
Kent State/Akron = George Mason
OU = JMU
BGSU/Toledo = ODU

The comparison is tempting. Especially with William & Mary and Miami being the only real comparables for each other in the country. And especially for UC fans who want UC to be regarded like Virginia Tech.

However, our system is fundamentally different because of the huge difference in the size of the flagship: Ohio State has 61,000 students. UVA has 25,000.

Ohio is about 30% bigger than Virginia, so you would expect UVA to about the size of UC if the systems were comparable.

What is the Ohio equivalent of small liberal arts public colleges like Longwood, University of Mary Washington, and Christopher Newport? They don't exist.



Also, the systems are fundamentally affected by the private schools in the state. Xavier = Richmond. Christendom = Stuebenville. But other than that?

What is the Virginia equivalent of Case Western? It doesn't exist.

What is the Virginia equivalent of Dayton? It doesn't exist.

What is the Ohio equivalent of Liberty? A large, mediocre private school with no research focus? It doesn't exist.

It seems like every little Ohio town has a university. Ohio has three times as many private schools with over 2,000 students as Virginia does, and none of the Virginia ones are highly ranked. What is the Virginia equivalent of Oberlin, Kenyon, Baldwin-Wallace, Dennison, John Carroll, etc? There's Washington & Lee, but it's tiny.

The number of colleges and universities in this state is ridiculous. Tiffin, Ohio has two colleges in their city and 24 others within a 50 mile radius.

Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

You view this from the point of view of an administrator. You view more choice as threatening the well-being of the institution, and therefore threatening the institution's ability to serve the state.

I would argue that if a student chooses a different school, it's because the other school fits his/her needs better. And I'd argue that an institution that can't serve the needs of its customers deserves to have a shrinking budget. And if it still refuses to change to meet its customers' needs (like Urbana or Wright State), it deserves to die.

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:25 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 10:23 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  I've always liked the Virginia system as a corrollary for what Ohio could be should we continue the way we are currently organized...two public academic engines (UVA and VT), one huge endowment with an extremely solid research drive in an urban environment (VCU), one highly reputable public LA/UG Research institution (W&M), and then large mostly UG focused research institutions in the major population areas (JMU, ODU, and GMU). To me, the comparison can push even further than what you've said.

OSU = UVA
UC = VCU (VERY similar institutions at this point...we're far off from VT, and likely will never get there based on the representative disparity in the State House.)
Miami = William and Mary
Kent State/Akron = George Mason
OU = JMU
BGSU/Toledo = ODU

The comparison is tempting. Especially with William & Mary and Miami being the only real comparables for each other in the country. And especially for UC fans who want UC to be regarded like Virginia Tech.

However, our system is fundamentally different because of the huge difference in the size of the flagship: Ohio State has 61,000 students. UVA has 25,000.

Ohio is about 30% bigger than Virginia, so you would expect UVA to about the size of UC if the systems were comparable.

What is the Ohio equivalent of small liberal arts public colleges like Longwood, University of Mary Washington, and Christopher Newport? They don't exist.



Also, the systems are fundamentally affected by the private schools in the state. Xavier = Richmond. Christendom = Stuebenville. But other than that?

What is the Virginia equivalent of Case Western? It doesn't exist.

What is the Virginia equivalent of Dayton? It doesn't exist.

What is the Ohio equivalent of Liberty? A large, mediocre private school with no research focus? It doesn't exist.

It seems like every little Ohio town has a university. Ohio has three times as many private schools with over 2,000 students as Virginia does, and none of the Virginia ones are highly ranked. What is the Virginia equivalent of Oberlin, Kenyon, Baldwin-Wallace, Dennison, John Carroll, etc? There's Washington & Lee, but it's tiny.

The number of colleges and universities in this state is ridiculous. Tiffin, Ohio has two colleges in their city and 24 others within a 50 mile radius.

Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

(09-23-2020 08:26 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:25 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:00 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  The comparison is tempting. Especially with William & Mary and Miami being the only real comparables for each other in the country. And especially for UC fans who want UC to be regarded like Virginia Tech.

However, our system is fundamentally different because of the huge difference in the size of the flagship: Ohio State has 61,000 students. UVA has 25,000.

Ohio is about 30% bigger than Virginia, so you would expect UVA to about the size of UC if the systems were comparable.

What is the Ohio equivalent of small liberal arts public colleges like Longwood, University of Mary Washington, and Christopher Newport? They don't exist.



Also, the systems are fundamentally affected by the private schools in the state. Xavier = Richmond. Christendom = Stuebenville. But other than that?

What is the Virginia equivalent of Case Western? It doesn't exist.

What is the Virginia equivalent of Dayton? It doesn't exist.

What is the Ohio equivalent of Liberty? A large, mediocre private school with no research focus? It doesn't exist.

It seems like every little Ohio town has a university. Ohio has three times as many private schools with over 2,000 students as Virginia does, and none of the Virginia ones are highly ranked. What is the Virginia equivalent of Oberlin, Kenyon, Baldwin-Wallace, Dennison, John Carroll, etc? There's Washington & Lee, but it's tiny.

The number of colleges and universities in this state is ridiculous. Tiffin, Ohio has two colleges in their city and 24 others within a 50 mile radius.

Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

Yep...education is about the only industry where competition doesn't make things better.

(09-23-2020 08:39 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:26 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 03:25 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  The number of colleges and universities in this state is ridiculous. Tiffin, Ohio has two colleges in their city and 24 others within a 50 mile radius.

Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

Yep...education is about the only industry where competition doesn't make things better.

Agreed. It would take a large dose of political courage to clean this up; "right size" the existing programs/schools, and even close some altogether. Corporations do it regularly or they don't survive.

Unfortunately, political courage is in short supply. And as long as the Ohio legislature can allocate some tax revenues to all the universities, it keeps each representative or senator in the good graces of his or her constituents and we have stasis.

Two billion dollars in UC's next capital campaign will make a difference. But real change must come structurally in a statewide system of higher education that separates the research engines (OSU and UC) from what could be re-envisioned as even better regional teaching institutions for undergraduates.

To be clear, I've openly talked with anyone interested about how limiting regional competition would in fact increase the profile of Higher Ed in Ohio rather significantly IMO. This has been posted on here by me a few times before, but if you take smaller regional institutions such as Toledo/BGSU and Kent State/Akron/CSU and tell them to specialize and become a part of an educational consortium (which would be even easier now that virtual learning could be done for general education courses), you'd allow funding to be distributed to the more signficant programs at each school, thus allowing them to grow and become even better, rather than peddling away cash trying to prop up programs that are obsolete to try to attract a few more kids.

This is what I would envision:
Northwest Ohio Regional Educational Consortium-
Bowling Green Campus: Environmental Sciences, Social Sciences, Fine Arts and Education
Toledo Campus: Engineering, Medicine, Nursing, Health Sciences (including Pharmacy), Law, and Hard Sciences
Shared Programs: Business

Northeast Ohio Regional Education Consortium-
Kent Campus: Nursing, Social Sciences, Education, and Fine Arts
Akron Campus: Engineering, Business, Law and Criminal Justice, and Health Sciences
Shared: Medicine (already being done at NEOMED), Education, and Natural Sciences

Cleveland State can operate on it's own, or could join the NEOREC and promote Criminal Justice and Law, Engineering, and Hard Sciences on it's campus while sharing Health/Medicine and Education with the others

This sort of model would absolulte limit student choice...however, would one rather have 3 damn good choices with a high chance of admission or 1 good choice with a lower chance of getting in and 6 below average choices? I know what makes more sense in reality.

(09-23-2020 09:56 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:39 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:26 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:00 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  Yep...Ohio is one of the worst states when it comes to college bound students per institution. Its the reason why I'd expect quite a few of the random small schools to either merge or shutter in the next few years.

That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

Yep...education is about the only industry where competition doesn't make things better.

Agreed. It would take a large dose of political courage to clean this up; "right size" the existing programs/schools, and even close some altogether. Corporations do it regularly or they don't survive.

Unfortunately, political courage is in short supply. And as long as the Ohio legislature can allocate some tax revenues to all the universities, it keeps each representative or senator in the good graces of his or her constituents and we have stasis.

Two billion dollars in UC's next capital campaign will make a difference. But real change must come structurally in a statewide system of higher education that separates the research engines (OSU and UC) from what could be re-envisioned as even better regional teaching institutions for undergraduates.

So your argument is that more PhD programs will compete for the same limited pool of students/faculty and dilute the strength of each. Is that correct?

The problem with that argument is that it's false.

Think of college football: does the existence of 6 MAC programs in Ohio reduce OSU's or UC's recruiting? Not in the slightest. Academia is even more extreme: in academia the 6 MAC programs don't even compete with each other.

Most PhD programs (other than education) compete on a worldwide basis.


My field has 5 PhD programs in Ohio: Ohio State, Case, Cincinnati, Kent, and Toledo. They literally never compete over the same PhD student or faculty hire.

Is Boston College hurt by sharing a city with Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston U, Northeastern, and 20 other colleges? Of course not. In fact, they are strengthened by it.

Akron is actually a shining example for why competition is good. They are failing their students, so they're shrinking and firing people. If they were in California (which seems to be your model system), they would still be failing their students because even in California's system the local Presidents still have the authority to make the decisions to start new programs like Akron did. But they would not be shrinking. Instead, they would be rewarded for their failure with ever-increasing budgets.

(09-23-2020 10:46 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 09:56 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:39 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:26 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

Yep...education is about the only industry where competition doesn't make things better.

Agreed. It would take a large dose of political courage to clean this up; "right size" the existing programs/schools, and even close some altogether. Corporations do it regularly or they don't survive.

Unfortunately, political courage is in short supply. And as long as the Ohio legislature can allocate some tax revenues to all the universities, it keeps each representative or senator in the good graces of his or her constituents and we have stasis.

Two billion dollars in UC's next capital campaign will make a difference. But real change must come structurally in a statewide system of higher education that separates the research engines (OSU and UC) from what could be re-envisioned as even better regional teaching institutions for undergraduates.

So your argument is that more PhD programs will compete for the same limited pool of students/faculty and dilute the strength of each. Is that correct?

The problem with that argument is that it's false.

Think of college football: does the existence of 6 MAC programs in Ohio reduce OSU's or UC's recruiting? Not in the slightest. Academia is even more extreme: in academia the 6 MAC programs don't even compete with each other.

Most PhD programs (other than education) compete on a worldwide basis.


My field has 5 PhD programs in Ohio: Ohio State, Case, Cincinnati, Kent, and Toledo. They literally never compete over the same PhD student or faculty hire.

Is Boston College hurt by sharing a city with Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston U, Northeastern, and 20 other colleges? Of course not. In fact, they are strengthened by it.

Akron is actually a shining example for why competition is good. They are failing their students, so they're shrinking and firing people. If they were in California (which seems to be your model system), they would still be failing their students because even in California's system the local Presidents still have the authority to make the decisions to start new programs like Akron did. But they would not be shrinking. Instead, they would be rewarded for their failure with ever-increasing budgets.

No, the argument is that having more programs dilutes the financial support for those programs, not that it dilutes student quality. Essentially, instead of having 5 strong colleges, a University has 9 average colleges because money most be spread to compete for those students. We're all talking about contraction in Higher Ed, just for some reason not agreeing on the rationale for it...Akron is the perfect example of why schools like them, Toledo, BGSU, KSU, etc. shouldn't be trying to do EVERYTHING like they are now. Look at my idea above...I think it fulfills what you're talking about, restricting the ability to expand needlessly and reducing needless competition for funds.

(09-23-2020 10:46 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 09:56 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:39 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(09-23-2020 08:26 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(09-22-2020 04:41 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  That's a big difference between me and you.

I view this from the point of view of the consumer and the student. I see more choice as better. More variety of institutions, more choices closer to home. And more competition forcing them to operate better.

The problem in Ohio is that all this "competition" did not force public universities to operate better. In fact, it had the exact opposite effect as the universities went on empire building sprees adding redundant and lowly ranked doctoral programs and professional schools. It led them to into wasteful building sprees and abandoning any sense of historic and core mission all because they were so sure that they would be the ones to thread the needle and become an AAU school. Look at Akron, that $%^&show didn't need the freedom to (attempt to) compete with OSU and UC. It needed a structured and regulated state system to delegate a role for it to play and enforce it staying in that lane. The state university system of Ohio is long overdue for both that regulated system and the consolidation of several of its campuses.

What you have had in Ohio is literally as if divisions of the same company independently tried to compete against each other. That makes for a highly unstable and likely failing company.

Yep...education is about the only industry where competition doesn't make things better.

Agreed. It would take a large dose of political courage to clean this up; "right size" the existing programs/schools, and even close some altogether. Corporations do it regularly or they don't survive.

Unfortunately, political courage is in short supply. And as long as the Ohio legislature can allocate some tax revenues to all the universities, it keeps each representative or senator in the good graces of his or her constituents and we have stasis.

Two billion dollars in UC's next capital campaign will make a difference. But real change must come structurally in a statewide system of higher education that separates the research engines (OSU and UC) from what could be re-envisioned as even better regional teaching institutions for undergraduates.

So your argument is that more PhD programs will compete for the same limited pool of students/faculty and dilute the strength of each. Is that correct?

The problem with that argument is that it's false.

Think of college football: does the existence of 6 MAC programs in Ohio reduce OSU's or UC's recruiting? Not in the slightest. Academia is even more extreme: in academia the 6 MAC programs don't even compete with each other.

Most PhD programs (other than education) compete on a worldwide basis.


My field has 5 PhD programs in Ohio: Ohio State, Case, Cincinnati, Kent, and Toledo. They literally never compete over the same PhD student or faculty hire.

Is Boston College hurt by sharing a city with Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Boston U, Northeastern, and 20 other colleges? Of course not. In fact, they are strengthened by it.

Akron is actually a shining example for why competition is good. They are failing their students, so they're shrinking and firing people. If they were in California (which seems to be your model system), they would still be failing their students because even in California's system the local Presidents still have the authority to make the decisions to start new programs like Akron did. But they would not be shrinking. Instead, they would be rewarded for their failure with ever-increasing budgets.

And how much better would the programs at OSU and UC be if every cent that the state put into the programs at Kent and Toledo (which I'm willing to bet the farm don't crack the top 100 in the NRC rankings) over the years had gone to strengthen the state's relevant programs instead. In some fields, Ohio funds 6 or 7 public doctoral programs. Do you believe that Ohio (a net exporter of law school grads) should be funding 5 law schools at public universities? That's the same number that California, with three and a half times the population, funds

And Akron is not an advertisement for competition within a public university system because Akron is an example of decades of grand illusions leading to years of wasteful spending and empire building that the state's taxpayers are almost certainly going to have to bail out in one way or another. Much better to have had a regulated, structured public system that would have prevented the boondoggle in the first place.

Or just use the state's money to fund Ohio students directly, instead of sending it to the schools. The best programs would attract the most students and the most funding.

(09-24-2020 08:39 AM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Or just use the state's money to fund Ohio students directly, instead of sending it to the schools. The best programs would attract the most students and the most funding.

Enrollment size doesn't equal quality. What happens to a highly selective program like Architecture at UC or Astronomy at OSU that doesn't want to take everyone who applies? That's why you need a structured system where universities are funded for their roles, and in the case of OSU and UC that role is to be a comprehensive research university. In the case of Akron, it's not.

(09-24-2020 08:39 AM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Or just use the state's money to fund Ohio students directly, instead of sending it to the schools. The best programs would attract the most students and the most funding.

That would certainly be a way to cut the discount rate at many institutions, but alas, all that 1985 says I would echo to this one. That hamstrings selective programs, as the most attractive programs normally are, and institutions would force that selectivity down to enroll more students.

(09-24-2020 08:39 AM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  Or just use the state's money to fund Ohio students directly, instead of sending it to the schools. The best programs would attract the most students and the most funding.

The more I think about that, that's pretty much what Ohio has had since the mid-60s. Every Ohio resident generates an "ohio instructional subsidy" for the school they choose to attend. It doesn't matter if it's OSU or UC or Shawnee State. It's the same amount of money. Now, there's been a recent, slight change to that where schools are given bonuses for retention and graduation rates, but the main subsidy is essentially the same.

I'd be much happier if schools were divided up and funded under separate appropriations bills based upon their tier/role. Let OSU get a certain amount of money regardless of the size of their freshman classes, and I'd bet you'd see them shrink those classes down and free up a lot of very well qualified students for the rest of the system.

It has been awhile since I did the research, but as of a few years ago OSU was receiving twice the amount of money per Ohio undergraduate student from the state than any other Ohio university.

I just want to add a post to thank all who have contributed to this thread. This is one of the more factual, intelligent, and useful discussions I have seen on any board, much less a sports board.

There is a place for rah, rah threads. But I gotta tell you, I really have enjoyed this one. Well done, one and all.

Didn’t want to start a new academic thread, but according to this article 4 Cincinnati high schools are among the top 25 feeder schools. Mason— not a big Columbus or Cleveland suburban school— is the top feeder school to OSU in the country. Having read similar lists for UC in the past, pretty sure we don’t have 4 Central Ohio schools in our feeder list.

Look, there’s always been a lot of love for OSU up in Mason, particularly compared to other parts of the Metro. It’s a huge school and I know UC gets a pretty large number of Mason grads as well. Would like to see UC to keep more of these kids home as well start picking up more kids from the Columbus suburbs as well. Just as many of the kids who grow up here want to move away, pretty sure there are a lot of kids from Dublin, Hilliard, Olantangy, Worthington etc who would like to have a change of scenery.

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n...ssion=true

(09-28-2020 04:16 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Didn’t want to start a new academic thread, but according to this article 4 Cincinnati high schools are among the top 25 feeder schools. Mason— not a big Columbus or Cleveland suburban school— is the top feeder school to OSU in the country. Having read similar lists for UC in the past, pretty sure we don’t have 4 Central Ohio schools in our feeder list.

Look, there’s always been a lot of love for OSU up in Mason, particularly compared to other parts of the Metro. It’s a huge school and I know UC gets a pretty large number of Mason grads as well. Would like to see UC to keep more of these kids home as well start picking up more kids from the Columbus suburbs as well. Just as many of the kids who grow up here want to move away, pretty sure there are a lot of kids from Dublin, Hilliard, Olantangy, Worthington etc who would like to have a change of scenery.

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n...ssion=true

Bolded, yes, this needs to be a priority for UC's enrollment management folks. I know it was a focused marketing effort in that area about 15 years ago. Whether that has continued, I can't say. But, in-state tuition, two hours from home with UC's campus and this city, it should be the most attractive destination for those kids from central Ohio who don't want to spend their next four years in nearby Columbus.

(09-28-2020 04:16 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Didn’t want to start a new academic thread, but according to this article 4 Cincinnati high schools are among the top 25 feeder schools. Mason— not a big Columbus or Cleveland suburban school— is the top feeder school to OSU in the country. Having read similar lists for UC in the past, pretty sure we don’t have 4 Central Ohio schools in our feeder list.

Look, there’s always been a lot of love for OSU up in Mason, particularly compared to other parts of the Metro. It’s a huge school and I know UC gets a pretty large number of Mason grads as well. Would like to see UC to keep more of these kids home as well start picking up more kids from the Columbus suburbs as well. Just as many of the kids who grow up here want to move away, pretty sure there are a lot of kids from Dublin, Hilliard, Olantangy, Worthington etc who would like to have a change of scenery.

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/n...ssion=true

I don't think it's anything about Mason particularly. I think Sycamore and X are on the list too. It's just that OSU is a very attractive school right now, and by and large, we're not competing for the same students as they are. Those kids from Mason, X or Sycamore that go to OSU most likely do not have UC as their second choice.

What UC needs to do is work hard to recruit statewide with a particular emphasis on the Columbus and Cleveland schools. Do that, and we expand our overall applicant pool, which means we can be more selective, which means we move up in rankings and in perception vis-a-vis OSU. Do all that, and we could be competing for the same students. But right now, it's not about convincing some kid with an OSU acceptance from either X or a Columbus HS to choose UC instead because that's a battle that we're not really going to win yet.

Looks like three state schools in PA are merging— Clarion, Edinburg and California University of Pennsylvania. A sign of things to come for Ohio?

https://www.post-gazette.com/news/educat...2010140147

(09-26-2020 10:46 AM)ucbandguy Wrote:  I just want to add a post to thank all who have contributed to this thread. This is one of the more factual, intelligent, and useful discussions I have seen on any board, much less a sports board.

There is a place for rah, rah threads. But I gotta tell you, I really have enjoyed this one. Well done, one and all.

Yes, I echo that sentiment! I’ve mentioned before how I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
My question though: is any change really going to happen?